A modified SM-6 destroyed USS ‘Reuben James,’ and that’s a big deal For more than 28 years, the frigate USS Reuben James served out a distinguished career in the U.S. Navy. Then two years after she retired, the former Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate ate an American missile and sank off the Hawaiian coast. It was no accident. In…
Category: Weapons & Ammo
Military Weapons from the Past: The ‘Hotchkiss Type Universal’ was a TINY Submachine Gun
The odd-looking Hotchkiss Type Universal represented an extraordinary attempt at creating an extremely compact submachine gun. The need was obvious. In World War II, soldiers found themselves getting in and out of vehicles, jumping from planes and fighting in close quarters. They needed a weapon that wouldn’t get in the way. Submachine guns had become…
Military Weapons From the Past: French MAC-47/1 Sub-Machine Gun
The Pistolet Mitrailleur des Manufactures d’Armes de Châtellerault Modele 47/1 was one of a number of French compact submachine gun designs that various arsenals and private companies developed during the late 1940s. It was a product of the government arsenal Manufactures d’Armes de Châtellerault, an institution best known for its FM M24/29 light machine gun. The Pistolet Mitrailleur…
Jihawg Ammo: “There’s a Pig in the Paint”
You’ve probably already heard about the bizarre, Islamist slaughter of an off-duty British soldier in broad daylight on a busy street in London in May 2013. The two assailants struck the victim with a car then jumped out and began hacking and slashing him with knives and a meat cleaver. The murderers then strutted…
Military Weapons from the Past: The MAT-49
Although it does not mention it here, this weapon was used quite frequently by American MACVSOG and LRRP Units in Vietnam. John L. Plasters’ excellent book, Secret Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines with the Elite Warriors of SOG, talks about it. Plaster also wrote one of the best books IMO on Long Range Shooting and Sniping…
History of Weapons: Hiram Maxim’s Self-Loading Rifle Came Before his Machine Gun
In 1883 Hiram Maxim designed a unique system that harnessed the recoil of a rifle. Maxim filed a patent for this system which, when the U.S. government granted it in April 1884, became his first firearm design patent — a year before his now-famous machine-gun concept patent. To prove his ideas about using recoil to operate…
History of Weapons: The Hill H15 Sub-Machine Gun was Ahead of it’s Time
Today’s FN P90 drew inspiration from John Hill’s obscure weapon Developed by engineer and inventor John Hill, the Hill H15 submachine gun was decades ahead of its time. The H15 inspired the successful FN P90 but the Hill gun itself faded into obscurity. Hill began developing the idea for his futuristic-looking gun in the…
Military Weapons from the Past: The DP Machine Gun aka “Stalin’s Phonograph”
Since 1928, the battlefields of the world have seen an oddball Soviet-era weapon that proves the truth of the old saying, “Looks aren’t everything.” Its nickname was once “Stalin’s phonograph” — and the staccato tune it plays is the sound of automatic fire. Used by the Russians to gun down both the Finns and the Nazis,…
You Can’t Fix Stupid: US Army Patents “Self-Destructing” Bullet?
Now the liberal gun safety lobby’s retarded thinking has invaded the US Army. God Help Us. As if the use of frangible bullets was not enough, now they have invented a .50 Caliber Bullet that actually self-destructs after a period of time? What?? I will go on the record right now and say this is…
Underwater Firearms: The Russian Amphibious Assault Rifle
The Soviet Union began developing underwater guns nearly 50 years ago. The idea — to arm commando frogmen and other combat divers for underwater engagements, however rare and unlikely these subsurface firefights might actually be. In the late 1960s, Moscow enlisted “TsNIITochMash” — the Central Scientific Research Institute of Precise Mechanical Engineering, a Soviet design…